iPad Pro Using iPad Pro for lecturing? Expert tips and suggestions?

[ozone]

I can be pretty picky myself. I decided that the Pencil wasn't for me, but I don't know what I would have done if I decided to keep it. For the few days I had it, I kept it in an envelope. I think I might have gotten my mom to make me a case for it -- it's handy having a mom who is good at sewing!

The sleeve I have is actually a holster from a mini-Magnum flashlight. It allows me to clip my fountain pen and a one or two other regular pens in it or to it. I mean - seriously - I'm not going to actually lend my precious fountain pen to a stranger now!

My Mom sews too, but she lives four provinces away, I'm a fully grown man, and she's probably think I'm nuts asking for a pen sleeve. Although since the very cute and adorable grandson came along, my Mom's pretty willing to indulge us!

 

[Night Spring]

My Mom sews too, but she lives four provinces away, I'm a fully grown man, and she's probably think I'm nuts asking for a pen sleeve. Although since the very cut and adorable grandson came along, my Mom's pretty willing to indulge us!

Well, my Mom lives in a whole other continent, but she's willing to indulge me when I ask her to sew something up. I also don't feel any reluctance in asking her to do stuff like this, because 1, she already knows I'm nuts! and 2, maybe it's different between a mother and daughter? In this case, it also helps that she also loves her iPP and Pencil. For now, she doesn't plan on taking her Pencil when she goes out, but if she ever decides she wants to take the Pencil out with her, she'll probably whip out a case, or think of some other clever way to carry it.

 

[apple_iBoy]

I use my iPad as a keynote remote (presenting from my MacBook, attached to the VGA cable for the projector). We also have an Apple TV hooked up via HDMA to our projector, so I sometimes switch to that input when I want to airplay — most from my iPhone as a mobile camera to show something up close to the class, or solve a problem on my iPad.

 

[RickTaylor]

I teach mathematics at a community college, and have been falling this thread with interest. I recently bought a Lenovo 14 Yoga laptop. You can fold the keyboard out of the way and draw on the screen with an active pen. I've been using it for giving lectures using OneNote, and am happy with it so far (the first post in this thread makes me think I should try out Windows journal). Still, one always wonders if the grass is greener on the other side, and I've been considering trying out an iPad pro.

The main advantages of the Lenovo:
It's a laptop. I need a laptop, so this saves me getting a device. Well, I still have my iPad mini, but I'd want that for portability even if I had an iPad pro.
The pen works ok. It works much better since I installed a screen protector, making it less slippery to write.
The screen is nice and large.
I have access to full Windows desktop programs.

As for the iPad pro:
The iPad pro looks to be more portable and elegant. I could perhaps use it to walk around while teaching in a way that would be impractical with the laptop. Also, it might be more practicul for use as a mathematical notebook. I wonder if the Apple pencil would help make my writing more legible. And I'm intrigued about what people say about good notes.

 

[Night Spring]

I could perhaps use it to walk around while teaching in a way that would be impractical with the laptop.

I was working on a document on my iPP today when I noticed a garbled up sentence. Picked up the iPP and walked into a co-worker's room to ask him about it. We then walked to our boss' room, and all three of us looked at the iPP, passing it around as we worked on ungarbling the sentence. I tapped in the corrections while standing next to my boss' desk, then walked back to my room to finish working on the thing. It works as well or even better than the smaller iPads in situations like this.

 

[silverblack]

Ha! I have GoodNotes too. Got way back. Guess I should try it, eh?

Most definitely. But don't use their text box function for finger writing. Make sure you select Apple pencil as input, and it will ink (almost) as well as writing with real pen and paper.

 

[ozone]

So, after using the iPad Pro for a number of weeks now, I figured I'd update my experience with it and offer my insight (for what it's worth) and ask for some help.

Several weeks ago, as I was about to lecture, the Pencil warning popped up saying it had less than 5% charge. I had forgotten to recharge it lately. Because I had to lecture right away, I figured I would just plug in the Pencil via an extra lightening cable to a USB charger and let it charge while I used it write notes.
Issue 1: I'm not sure why Apple insisted on the inverted Lightning connector, as well as the Lightning coupler, for the Pencil. From my perspective, the coupler is just another, very small gadget that can be lost, and yet sort of needs to be carried everywhere for those just-in-case instances.
Issue 2: After I plugged in the Pencil to charge, I could not get it to work with the iPad! The Pencil would not register on the screen while it charged. Does anybody else have this issue? Is it just me? I ended up using the whiteboard - how archaic.

I had tried GoodNotes for some note taking during meetings, and it worked well. So, I used it to lecture the next week (after remembering to charge the Pencil!). Except, when I tried to pinch zoom in on the iPad to enlarge the projected image on the screen for students in the back to better see, nothing happened. The zoom ratio seemed fixed. So, I went back to Notability where I could zoom in on the screen and it would also do so on the projected image on the screen.

I'm generally happy with Notability but I wanted to try GoodNotes because of its slightly better organizational structure, graphics engine (for making straight lines and circles), and because I could tell where page breaks were. I found that Notability would cut me off at various page breaks. However, I see now that you can see the page breaks on Notability - they're just really, really faint.

Can I zoom in GoodNotes while projecting to an external screen?

Some days, I think a Surface Pro would have served my needs better because, frankly, it is a regular computer and so I have more multi-tasking options. The iPP is still a tablet afterall. On the other hand, I haven't used the table overly much - as I suspected - so that would have meant having a much more expensive Surface just sitting around. And I still can't stand Windows updates.

At the end, I think the ideal combination is to have both a computer and an iPad - with the iPP literally being an electronic notepad.

 

[username:]

So, after using the iPad Pro for a number of weeks now, I figured I'd update my experience with it and offer my insight (for what it's worth) and ask for some help.

Several weeks ago, as I was about to lecture, the Pencil warning popped up saying it had less than 5% charge. I had forgotten to recharge it lately. Because I had to lecture right away, I figured I would just plug in the Pencil via an extra lightening cable to a USB charger and let it charge while I used it write notes.
Issue 1: I'm not sure why Apple insisted on the inverted Lightning connector, as well as the Lightning coupler, for the Pencil. From my perspective, the coupler is just another, very small gadget that can be lost, and yet sort of needs to be carried everywhere for those just-in-case instances.
Issue 2: After I plugged in the Pencil to charge, I could not get it to work with the iPad! The Pencil would not register on the screen while it charged. Does anybody else have this issue? Is it just me? I ended up using the whiteboard - how archaic.

I had tried GoodNotes for some note taking during meetings, and it worked well. So, I used it to lecture the next week (after remembering to charge the Pencil!). Except, when I tried to pinch zoom in on the iPad to enlarge the projected image on the screen for students in the back to better see, nothing happened. The zoom ratio seemed fixed. So, I went back to Notability where I could zoom in on the screen and it would also do so on the projected image on the screen.

I'm generally happy with Notability but I wanted to try GoodNotes because of its slightly better organizational structure, graphics engine (for making straight lines and circles), and because I could tell where page breaks were. I found that Notability would cut me off at various page breaks. However, I see now that you can see the page breaks on Notability - they're just really, really faint.

Can I zoom in GoodNotes while projecting to an external screen?

Some days, I think a Surface Pro would have served my needs better because, frankly, it is a regular computer and so I have more multi-tasking options. The iPP is still a tablet afterall. On the other hand, I haven't used the table overly much - as I suspected - so that would have meant having a much more expensive Surface just sitting around. And I still can't stand Windows updates.

At the end, I think the ideal combination is to have both a computer and an iPad - with the iPP literally being an electronic notepad.

I believe there is some setting that fixes the output when goodnotes is in TV out mode. I'm pretty sure you can turn it off.
See http://www.goodnotesapp.com/user-guide/tv-out.html


Nice to hear how it's going with the iPad pro.

 

[silverblack]

Can I zoom in GoodNotes while projecting to an external screen?

Yes. In Goodnotes:
Options - Settings - General - Hide User Interface (turn it off)

 

[RickTaylor]

. . .

Can I zoom in GoodNotes while projecting to an external screen?

It's funny you should mention this, as it is one of the features I really like about GoodNotes. It allows me to zoom in so I can write more accurately, while still allowing the students to see the whole screen.